It’s recital season… and that means that thousands of children around the world are preparing to place themselves in front of a room full of people… and odds are… some will flop!
While we all do our best to prepare piano students as much as we can for any pitfalls that may occur during a performance, there is sometimes nothing we can do. A wrong note becomes a stumbled passage… which becomes a flubbed left hand… which becomes a horribly a-tonal ending… which becomes a sobbing piano student with her head in her mom’s lap at the back of the hall.
We’ve all seen it happen. Perhaps you’ve even been there yourself (maybe not sobbing in your mom’s lap… but you likely wished you could be!).
The let-down of ruining an otherwise polished performance, the embarrassment of flopping in public, and the adrenaline residue all combine to make a piano student wish the ground would open up and swallow her whole.
How To Repair “Flopped Performance” Damage
Obviously, proper preparation, lots of performance practice and even in-depth performance anxiety instruction is the best way to avoid this from happening in the first place. But stuff happens. And when you’re dealing with kids, it happens with more frequently than we’d like it to.
So what do you do with the resulting puddle who is sobbing “I never want to play in a recital again!” (or the less emotional yet stoic, stone-faced and embarrassed teen?) Check out my 5 tips for Flopped Performance Damage Control:
1. Allow time for your piano student to simply be upset. We often make the mistake of attempting to sweep away feelings that are uncomfortable for children when it’s actually okay for them to be sad. Telling them not to be upset, or making them feel as though they shouldn’t be feeling what they’re feeling does nothing but add to their emotional turmoil.
2. Don’t ignore the obvious. If you attempt to sweep the unfortunate incident under the rug by ignoring it, you’ll leave your piano student feeling confused. But you don’t need to launch into a counseling session either. A brief squeeze of the shoulder or an understanding smile along with a “We’ll talk about it at your lesson this week” makes your student feel cared-for but not pounced on.
3. Coach the parents. All of my well-meaning attempts at preserving my students’ dignity and willingness to perform ever again can be undone with a well-meaning comment from a parent. I always make sure to let the parent know that this is completely normal, that the best thing to do is to be positive about their next opportunity to perform and to avoid any discussions of “What happened?” or “You played it perfectly at home!”
4. Use Humor. Once you have given your piano student time to just be upset (maybe even in your next lesson time) use kind humor to diffuse any embarrassment. Relate their experience to a horrible performance experience you yourself have had. Give them all the gory details and have a good laugh about how awful it feels.
5. Create a re-do. This is the most important part of “Flopped Performance Damage Control”. One of the reasons students are usually so upset is because they really did work hard on their piece. Their flubbed rendition bore no resemblance to what they did at home. They didn’t get their moment to shine. And so I give them a re-do of the same piece. Invite Mom and Dad in at the end of your lesson for a mini-performance or videotape your student and post it to your studio blog or Facebook. Give her the chance to prove that she can do it.
The Unfortunate Parts Of Being A Musician
Having an “epic fail” story is just part of becoming a musician. When my last student had a “fall-apart” moment I pulled up Youtube and we spent some time experiencing quite dramatic “fails”. It was a great opportunity to ask “How do you think this guy felt?”. By asking about someone else’ emotions your students are more likely to share how they themselves felt when it all “went bad”. With these insights you can then better offer advice and know exactly what to say to rebuild confidence and get your student back on the stage for a successful performance in the future.
More Piano Recital Prep Resources:
The Piano Teacher’s Guide To The Stage Fright Monster
Revolutionize Your Piano Students’ Performance Prep With Tap Practice
Control the Jackrabbits – 7 Tips For Slowing Speedy Students
Sandra says
All good suggestions.
I set the stage at the beginning of the recital by reminding everyone that we are a friendly audience, and we support one another — even if things don’t go the way we wish.
When things go badly wrong, I will ask a student if they want to try again. Sometimes if they are not too upset they will start over. Other times I will give them a chance later in the program if they want it. Usually they do! …That is my version of the “re-do”!
Andrea says
Hi Sandra – yes, this is so important to give them a second chance! We blogged about this in our Stage Fright Monster post. Going back and asking them if they’d like to try again really gives kids the opportunity for a successful performance.
Eleanor Baldwin says
My students rarely flop. We talk about the possibility of flopping and I say things like:
1. What’s going to happen if you flop? Are your parents going to go to Walmart, shop for another child and put you in the trash?
2. When you die, is someone going to put “She forgot the f#” on your tombstone?
Theater of the absurd is highly underrated.
I never let students play from memory. And I xerox so they don’t have to turn pages.
I also don’t have piano recitals anymore. I title the program as PIANO TIME. We are going to share our favorite songs.
I write two positive sentences about each child under the list of songs. Reading that gives them a natural high.
They know my motto for making mistakes. It is “keep on truckin”. And they do. No tears. At the next lesson, I will say something like
“I love the way you made that mistake and kept on trucking. Bravo!”
Obviously my kids are not going to Julliard but the music education courses at the University of Michigan stressed “music for everyone” and that is what I have done all these years.
Eleanor Baldwin
Andrea says
Love this Eleanor (actually I love everything you write. Your sense of humour gels perfectly with mine 😉 ).
Joan says
I could have written this myself. Thanks, Eleanor!
Barbara says
Beautiful, Eleanor. Thanks for posting this; I’ll be using these ideas:)
Dana says
What great comments and ideas on recitals. Thank you Eleanor, they really help to keep things in perspective.
Virginia Jones says
This came just at the right time. I am having a piano recital tomorrow afternoon with 28 students performing. There’s bound to be some stage fright meltdowns and I was just thinking how to handle them. Thanks Andrea and all who commented.
Andrea says
Hope your recital went well Virginia!
Emily Dueck says
Those are awesome suggestions for damage control, I have a couple pre-recital ones which I figured may be worth sharing:
Memory Points/Piano Seatbelts
These are points in the music that are not only memorized with the ever-sketchy “muscle memory”, but also analytically. By analytically, I mean “Here I’m playing an C minor chord with both hands, then going up in an arpeggio in the right hand”. Doesn’t have to be that complicated. For young students, I call V7 chords squishy-stretch chords, and just knowing whether to go up or down is sufficient. Usually these points are one or two-bar sections that can be jumped to should disaster strike. Depending on the length of the piece, there may only need to be two (first bar and one somewhere in the middle); as a reference, my current piece is 6 pages long and has 7 ‘”seatbelts”.
Practice Faking and Recovery (Broken Piano)
Parents can definitely participate in this one. The student starts playing their recital piece and at some point, I/mom/dad/sibling shouts “your piano’s broken!” and the student has to intentionally play wrong notes but try to make the piece sound similar to the original. After a few seconds of floundering (which, on stage, feels like eons), the person listening can say “fixed it!”; the student can then go back to playing their piece normally (by jumping to a memory seatbelt if it’s memorized)
My favourite motto “instant forgiveness”
Once a piece is past the point of learning the notes (where pausing for correction may actually be helpful), I try to encourage students to forgive their mistakes as soon as they’re made. Just go “yup, that happened and it’s okay”, and move on. The way I rationalize it is:
If you’re hung up on playing a B instead of a C, you’re not thinking about what you’re actually playing and oops, suddenly there’s another mistake and then oh no, another one and aaaaah my piece is falling apart and it’s crashing, then suddenly BOOM the piano explodes in a fiery mess. What the heck happened? The pilot wasn’t looking at where s/he was going. It’s like trying to drive a car while staring out the back window, sure you’ll see all the signs you missed, but you’re not seeing the one right in front of you.
Distractions! Distractions Everywhere!
We’ve all been at piano recitals where there’s that one kid’s baby brother who’s insanely cranky, or the cellphone that goes off, a door opens and blows all your sheet music off the piano (because someone arrived late, grrr), or mom’s got the hi-tech camera out and it has a super loud shutter sound. So practice ignoring these crazy distractions! This was my sister’s favourite thing to do when I was practicing, I swear. The goal is to do everything possible to distract the pianist without actually touching them or interfering with their movement, while the pianist’s goal is to keep playing right to the end of the piece without stopping.
Speaking of sheet music flying off the piano, I have two remedies for that one: memorize your music even if you’re playing with it in front of you, and glue those photocopied sheets to a nice long piece of cardboard (or use heavy construction paper on the back of each one).
Well I wrote more than I originally intended to, but hopefully it helps someone!
Sophie says
I like how you have the memory points and you practice using them – that’s a great idea. I usually prep my students with “jump to the nearest bit you know well” but… I could be more specific.
Andrea says
Thanks so much for sharing Emily! I love the broken piano one. Stealing that 😉